1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to computer systems, and more particularly, service systems with kernel events.
2. Description of the Related Art
Multi-tier applications are currently being developed with increasing software complexity along with higher user expectations on service quality. A retracing of the history of execution flows of individual requests within and across the components of a distributed system is often necessary in order to find out the root cause of software problems. However, the prediction of internal states of all relevant components of a system when an unexpected problem occurs has been difficult to achieve. For example, retracing the history of execution flows is cumbersome and tricky due to the overwhelming number of hardware and software combinations, different workload characteristics, and usage patterns of end users.
Kernel event traces are time sequences of low-level system events, such as system calls, scheduling events, interrupts, I/O operations, locking operations, etc. The kernel events are a combination of various request paths which are end to end paths of kernel events responding to external requests. Determining request paths from kernel event traces is difficult when the system is processing numerous requests concurrently because the request paths are highly interleaved with each other. A system and device which enables understanding system execution, such as profiling request paths from system kernel events, in a transparent manner, with minimal overhead, would be highly advantageous.